‘But do I have to follow their treatment plan?’ Irma asked with a sly smile after they’d drunk quite a few glasses of wine. A couple of nurses had come to sit with them, and one of them said that Irma didn’t have to follow their orders. Because she would be living in her own apartment she could decide herself whether she needed care or not.
‘You mean you did all that work for nothing?’ Irma lamented, and they made a toast to all the craziness in the world.
Chapter 59
Mika Korhonen came with a friend to help with the move. It was fantastic, because they couldn’t have managed it without these big, strong men. Anna-Liisa had a tremendous number of things, and since half of her belongings were books, there was a lot of carrying to do. The poor fellows were drenched with sweat. Siiri told them to take off their leather jackets so they wouldn’t be so hot, but they refused. Their motorcycles gleamed beautifully in the Sunset Grove car park, and attracted deserved attention.
Anna-Liisa was an efficient supervisor, accustomed to command, and she had a detailed plan prepared ahead of time. She stood in the middle of the apartment with drawings in her hand and issued clear and audible instructions. Quite a large load of the Ambassador’s possessions went to the dump, because otherwise Anna-Liisa’s treasures wouldn’t have fit. Two walls had to be cleared for bookshelves, and Mika kindly spent an entire day assembling them. Anna-Liisa wanted the books arranged in alphabetical order according to language area.
‘The German novels on my right, the Russian ones on my left. The Finnish fiction here in the middle at my eye level, and the Finnish non-fiction in the same spot on the other wall.’
The boys were rattled. They didn’t know which books were fiction and which weren’t. Anna-Liisa was admirably patient with them, and didn’t get upset, even when one of them thought that Joel Lehtonen’s Wild Chervil was a book about plants and the other one asked what language group Thomas Mann should be in.
‘I’m a language and literature teacher. I’ve seen it all.’
The Ambassador was nowhere to be found on moving day. He had gone to his summer house to meet his offspring and former wives from abroad and tell them about the new turn his life had taken – the marriage, in other words, which was to take effect the following week. The announcements had been made, the non-impediments taken care of, and Irma and Siiri were almost going to be bridesmaids, or at least go to the Pasila courthouse to serve as witnesses.
‘Should we put ribbons in our hair?’ Irma asked, but Anna-Liisa just snorted and continued issuing orders to her leather-jacketed army.
Irma’s apartment, Anna-Liisa’s old apartment, was quite empty, of course, because her relatives had sold all her possessions. They didn’t hear anything from the darlings, which Siiri thought was shameless behaviour, but Irma was terribly understanding about it and said that of course they were embarrassed and that was why they didn’t dare show their faces. And they were so busy, too, because of the summer holidays. Irma seemed unfazed. In fact, she seemed positively thrilled at the chance to decorate her new apartment.
‘Is thrilled the opposite of unfazed? What do you think?’ she asked as she thumbed through the IKEA catalogue.
Siiri couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Irma had always lived among her ancestors’ antique furniture, cherished them like relatives, told stories about them, how her uncle had spilled liqueur on the card table and left a stain that would never fade, how the bust of Runeberg had made the rounds of the summer cabins, frightening innocent victims, and how they’d found a wad of currency from the time of the tzars that was of no use to anyone now, in a hidden drawer in the chiffonier. And here she was, blissful at discovering IKEA. She thought the veneer furniture that you put together yourself was awfully cute. But there didn’t seem to be any rose-print upholstery at all.
‘They have such funny names, too! Klumpen, Stumpan, Buller and Bang!’
Those were names she’d made up out of her head, but what did it matter? Mika Korhonen had promised to come over to carry and assemble her new furniture, and Siiri was glowing with more happiness than even Anna-Liisa, because Irma was herself again, and making Siiri’s days happy ones.
Siiri had ridden the tram every day to visit Irma in the hospital, on several different routes, and sometimes the trip from Munkkiniemi to Töölö had taken almost two hours, if she was feeling particularly adventurous. Helsinki was so beautiful in the summer. It felt as if the whole place were designed just for summer – the plazas and market squares and all the new construction that had gone up in the past few years. Helsinki in July was like a big amusement park, and the tram was the rollercoaster.
Irma made her apartment very personalized. She combined traditional white Swedish furniture that looked like something out of an old Carl Larsson illustration with bright-coloured modern furniture designed for children. IKEA was an amazing place. You could get cheese-cutters and flowers for your balcony and finish up by eating some meatballs and chocolate. Mika came with them on their IKEA adventure and acted like an experienced tour guide.
‘This is the real amusement park,’ Irma said as they lay on the test mattresses in the bed department.
A young sales clerk wanted to know Irma’s weight and all kinds of other information, such as what position she slept in, and Irma started to flirt with him until Siiri was embarrassed, but he just laughed and sold Irma an enormous bed with mattress, pillows and bedclothes.
‘It’s called the Sultan. Can you believe it?’ Irma enthused.
‘What, no harem?’ Siiri laughed.
Mika had his work cut out for him, painting the walls white and putting the furniture together, but they were in no hurry, because Irma had been told she could stay at Kivelä Hospital until the end of August.
In the meantime, there was Anna-Liisa and Onni’s marriage ceremony to attend, and Siiri and Irma served as their witnesses. Both members of the wedding party were wearing formal attire.
‘Why get married in black?’ said Irma in wonder, as they waited in the hallway for the ceremony.
‘For practical reasons,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘We can wear the same clothes to funerals.’
‘Clever!’ Irma said. ‘So that’s what you’ll look like standing next to my coffin.’
The magistrate’s wedding chamber was small and drab, and the judge behaved about as enthusiastically as he would withdrawing cash from his own account. Anna-Liisa was very touched, in spite of the ordinariness of the setting, and said ‘I do’ much louder than she needed to. The Ambassador behaved in his accustomed manner, positively shouting his ‘I do’.
Irma and Siiri didn’t have any real role in the ceremony; they just sat in the drab office chairs and wrote their names on a piece of paper when it was over. A problem arose, of course, when they didn’t have anything but their old driver’s licences as identification, but Anna-Liisa handled the matter with her own passport like an old pro. She wouldn’t need to request a new passport, because she wasn’t changing her name.
‘Onni’s last name is Rinta-Paakku,’ she explained.
Anna-Liisa and Onni left Pasila in a taxi to go to Restaurant Lehtovaara, and then somewhere for their honeymoon. It was quite absurd, but Anna-Liisa was very secretive about it and said that Onni had arranged everything and even she didn’t know where he was taking her.
‘To Tallinn with a veterans’ tour group,’ Irma whispered to Siiri, and they hopped happily onto a tram home – yes, home, because now that Irma was at Sunset Grove again, and Virpi and Erkki Hiukkanen were nowhere to be seen, it was finally starting to feel like a real home.
Chapter 60
When they got to Munkkiniemi, Irma wanted to treat Siiri to lunch at a French restaurant on Laajalahdentie. Siiri didn’t know that before her hospital adventure Irma had been to the restaurant so often that she knew all of the staff. A dazzlingly handsome young man rushed over to give her a hug and another man with a beard took her coat. They spoke at length in French and then the men hugged Irma again
.
‘Did you notice how I haven’t forgotten my French, even though I’m soft in the head?’ Irma said proudly, when finally the men had gone back to their work. The short one was the chef, the taller one the waiter.
‘He’s from Martinique,’ Irma began, and she told Siiri the man’s life story, which was teeming with siblings and surprising twists. ‘So it will be a loss to our nation when he leaves us.’
‘What do you mean, leaves us?’
‘Don’t you understand any French at all, after taking the beginners’ course at the community centre seven times over? He just said that he’ll only be here for two more weeks, deux semaines. That’s why he gave me such a warm embrace. First, because he thought I had died, and second, because he’s going to be leaving us.’
‘You actually could have died,’ Siiri said, to get Irma to say what she’d been waiting for her to say for a long time. But Irma paid no attention.
‘It’s a pity they don’t sell red wine here. We can get wine at IKEA, but not in a French restaurant at lunchtime.’
Siiri agreed. After all, they were celebrating the fact that Anna-Liisa was married for the third and last time, and Irma had come home. That Irma wasn’t demented at all, and her hip, with its glowing titanium spike, was healing up and her new home was coming together nicely and quite quickly. She was still using a Zimmer frame, but Siiri felt sure that she would be done with it before the snow fell, and then she could go back to her beloved Carl the Cane.
‘Maybe. And in September, we’ll celebrate your ninety-fifth birthday,’ Irma said contentedly, planning her life out like she used to do.
A very small baby at the next table started to whimper. Irma went quite gaga over it – she had always had a weak spot for babies. The smaller they were, the weaker she became, and this one was perhaps only a few weeks old. Irma learned that the baby’s name was Rudolf and he kept his mother up quite a bit at night. Then the baby’s mother whipped out her breast and started nursing Rudolf right there in front of them, even though they were eating lunch. Even Irma had trouble smiling at her new friend and searched feverishly for a new topic of conversation.
‘How is your criminal case going?’ she asked carelessly, as if they were discussing window cleaning. Which was another thing you had to do yourself at Sunset Grove – no one had come to wash the windows, although summer was almost over and the windows had got so dirty over the winter that the sun couldn’t get in. There they sat in the dark, all those miserable oldies who couldn’t get out to a restaurant in the way Siiri and Irma could. They didn’t even know if it was summer or winter.
‘Don’t change the subject. Are you going to jail for arson?’
Siiri told her what she knew. Mika Korhonen had kept her up to date, no longer evading the subject or avoiding her. Siiri’s complaint had been shoved somewhere and it was working its way through the requisite cogs of justice so she didn’t have a ghost of a worry. She knew what had really happened, and, more importantly, what hadn’t happened. Even if she did use the key to the closed unit without permission, they couldn’t put her in jail for that. She hadn’t started the fire, and if there were any criminals at Sunset Grove, they were on the board of directors of the Loving Care Foundation. She knew that evil would be punished eventually. And besides, their detective work had kept them busy. She had felt useful, as though her life had a purpose again, and she was sure that this wasn’t to be the end of it.
‘It’ll either never be solved, or it will someday,’ Irma said, and sprinkled some sugar on her baguette.
‘At any rate, it’ll take a long time for the case to run its course, and anything could happen to me in the meantime.’
‘It certainly could. You might die, for instance. Ah! I love how the sugar crunches between my teeth!’
‘True. And that’s really a relief, you know. And, it’s so wonderful that you’re alive again!’ Siiri said, and she meant it from the bottom of her raggedy heart. Irma understood and said that they had to have a big party in honour of her resurrection, before Siiri’s birthday.
‘Since we didn’t get a wedding party. Let’s have the kind of party where you serve champagne. Even though it puts knots in your stomach and makes you belch. Maybe we should just make some punch.’
‘Punch or champagne, anything will do,’ Siiri said, worn out with happiness. ‘What else have you got planned?’
‘We’re going to start playing four-handed piano. I’ve already been to the West Helsinki music school to talk to them about it.’
Siiri suspected that the music school was just for children, but Irma had asked about that, too. The rector had enquired if they’d ever taken piano lessons before, and when Irma told her that they had got off to a good beginning but were interrupted by the start of the Winter War seventy-three years ago, the rector didn’t ask any more questions.
‘But before we start piano lessons we’re going to take an Internet class.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. They have them at the Munkkiniemi senior centre, next door to the health clinic. They take you by the hand and teach you what the Internet is and how to get on it. I’m sure you realize that you can’t carry on without the net.’
‘Do we have to buy a computer?’
‘Of course! And it’s not a computer any more, it’s a tablet, and you brush it and stroke it and it politely obeys you. That’s the kind we’re going to buy. I want a green one. I’ve seen them in the Stockmann preferred-customer flyer.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Irma!’ Siiri cried. ‘With you around I don’t know where in the world I’ll end up!’
‘Dead,’ Irma laughed, and finally said what Siiri had been waiting for her to say: ‘Döden, döden, döden.’
First published 2016 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2016 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-8930-2
Copyright © Minna Lindgren 2016
Translation copyright © Lola Rogers 2016
Cover Illustration by Jim Tierney
The right of Minna Lindgren to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Originally published 2013 as Kuolema Ehtoolehdossa by Teos Publishing, Finland
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The Lavender Ladies Detective Agency: Death in Sunset Grove Page 28
